The parables Jesus tells in Matthew 24-25 all point to the same call: stay prepared, stay engaged, stay ready. We never know when the end will come. Like a soccer match ticking into stoppage time, we don't know when the final whistle will blow. And just as only the referee knows when a match is officially over, only God the Father knows when the end will come. Jesus himself says as much: "Now concerning that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven nor the Son,

Here's a question that sounds simple but isn't: what does it feel like to be lost? Most of us jump straight to helpless or frustrated. But that's not quite right. Being lost doesn't feel like being lost. It feels like you're going the right direction. It feels like everything's fine. You think you're on track. I know this from personal experience. I've been lost in a church building, a Walmart, a mall in New Orleans, the streets of Rome, and the roads outside Glacier National

Paul is writing to a church in the middle of the Roman Empire, and the Roman Empire had very strong opinions about how a household should run. At the top sat the paterfamilias, the father of the household. His word was law. Husbands held full authority over their wives, who were essentially viewed as property. Fathers decided where their children went to school, who they would marry, and even, in a chilling practice common across the empire, whether a newborn infant would be